There are 2,700,000 Boy Scouts and 1 million adult scoutmasters in the U.S.

They were angrily denounced by the so-called Human Rights Campaign of militant homosexuals.

The Post reported:

“After a confidential two-year review, the Boy Scouts of America on Tuesday emphatically reaffirmed its policy of excluding gays, angering critics who hoped that relentless protest campaigns might lead to change.

“The Scouts cited support from parents as a key reason for keeping the policy and expressed hope that the prolonged debate over it might now subside. Bitter reactions from gay-rights activists suggested that result was unlikely.

“The Scouts’ national spokesman, Deron Smith, told the Associated Press that an 11-member special committee, formed discreetly by top Scout leaders in 2010, came to the conclusion that the exclusion policy ‘is absolutely the best policy’ for the 102-year-old organization.

“Smith said the committee, comprised of professional scout executives and adult volunteers, was unanimous in its conclusion – preserving a long-standing policy that was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2000 and has remained controversial ever since.”

The Scouts’ chief executive, Bob Mazzuca, said:

“The vast majority of the parents of youth we serve value their right to address issues of same-sex orientation within their family, with spiritual advisers and at the appropriate time and in the right setting. We fully understand that no single policy will accommodate the many diverse views among our membership or society.”

The Post reported, “The president of the largest U.S. gay-rights group, Chad Griffin of the Human Rights Campaign, depicted the Scouts’ decision as ‘a missed opportunity of colossal proportions.'”

“With the country moving toward inclusion, the leaders of the Boy Scouts of America have instead sent a message to young people that only some of them are valued,” he said. “They’ve chosen to teach division and intolerance.”

There was no report in the Post that any homosexual critics of the Boy Scouts have criticized the Scouts because they do not allow scoutmasters who are polygamists, pedophiles, incestuous, exhibitionists, copraphiliacs, necrophiliacs, urophiliacs or zoophiliacs – or any other of the numerous alternate sexual orientations.

In an editorial headlined, “Boy Scouts stay straight,” the Washington Times noted:

“In the Boy Scout oath, a young man promises to keep himself morally straight. Despite pressure from homosexual activists, that pledge will continue to mean something. …

“Homosexual activists claim this is discrimination, but the dispute is actually over the freedom to associate. This was made plain in the 2000 Supreme Court case Boy Scouts of America v. Dale, which directly addressed the Scouts’ policy. The high court held that a New Jersey public-accommodations law did not require BSA to reinstate a homosexual assistant scoutmaster since that application of the law conflicted with the First Amendment right of freedom of association.

“‘We have long understood as implicit in the right to engage in activities protected by the First Amendment a corresponding right to associate with others in pursuit of a wide variety of political, social, economic, educational, religious and cultural ends,’ then-Chief Justice William Rehnquist wrote for the majority. The court reasoned that the state forcing an organization to accept members it doesn’t want may fatally impair the pursuit of the group’s intended goals. The majority also stated flatly that freedom of association ‘plainly presupposes a freedom not to associate.'”

“BSA is a private organization that espouses a moral code. The BSA leadership believes that discussing matters of sexuality is best left to families and spiritual advisers and has no place in scouting. Many parents are concerned about the potential influence of open homosexuals over their sons during their formative ages. BSA provides a safe space for them to send their children without worrying that they would become captive to a political agenda that parents object to on moral grounds.

“Homosexuals should stop trying to force themselves on the Boy Scouts.”